cheating isn't that bad..?

I have been defending infidelity for a long time, and no that does not make me a cheater.

Infidelity is as old as marriage, but seeing how marriage has revolutionised, so has our reasons for cheating. In an era of tinder, Instagram story likes and saved thirst traps, cheating has never been so accessible nor has it been so undefinable.

We used to have affairs to find ‘real’ love that could not be found within the confines of marriage but now since we are mostly marrying for love, why are we still cheating?

Betrayal hurts because the promise of monogamy is compromised. The stability of the system is broken, trust is lost and the ego is hurt. When we choose a partner, we choose a best friend, a parent, a companion, a freak, a person to assimilate all the roles we require to attain the future we imagine for ourselves. It is here in this imagination that I believe the first traces of indefinity arise. Ruskin defines idolatry as:

‘The serving with the best of our hearts and minds, some dear or sad fantasy which we have made for ourselves’

Ruskin, and later Proust, suggest that infidelity manifests due to a ‘moral blindness’. It begins in the mind, the fantasising of the Erewhon cashier, or the bestfriends boyfriend. The dreams of held gazes, brushed fingers or perhaps it just, raw. This gives us a form of pleasure that can only be accessed when there is moral betrayal, a violation of the promise made in the relationship. Things can only feel good if we know they are wrong. Shoplifting is like cheating in this regard, a perversion of desire in which we take, in the hope we are not caught, but it is the risk of this act that sets our body of fire.

(Yes I am a retired klepto)

I do not want to believe that the psychology of a cheater can be so basic, ‘cheaters cheat because that’s who they are’, they are ‘selfish, impulsive and immoral’. We syndicate the behaviour of cheating to a personality trait. Tell one lie you’re a liar, cheat once you’re a cheater, give one homeless man a dollar you’re a philanthropist?

This labelling absolves us from engaging with the deeper truths, why do we cheat when we love our partner? What if cheating isn’t about a lack of love but a lack of something else.. something within ourselves?

The three types of infidelity recognised by Moshe Algamor are sexual, emotional and virtual. I don’t believe the physical act of cheating is any better or worse than the emotional. Though I agree that there is a difference in acting on desire and not acting on it, the desire still exists. Desire is produced and survives in conditions of inadequacy, whether this is in the relationship or in the individual themselves. Such inadequacy is not necessarily defectiveness but rather may be something we are missing, whether it is love, sex, emotional stability or friendship. When we ask one person to consist of multitudes, it is no surprise that they fall short, and when they do, we out source. Unspoken expectations turn to premeditated resentments. And that is not to blame the person being cheated on but rather the natural outcome of unrealistic expectations. So we must question, is self restraint an action of love?

We hate hearing ‘its not you its me’ but its often true. To be cheated on because the person that chose you, has proved that they now believe that you are not worth keeping the sanctity of the promise, is doomed to be an emotional catastrophe. When we are chosen by another we believe we are unique, we have something no one else does, we are something that no one else is. So when that is taken away, our ego shatters. This is not necessarily a generalisation, there are of course healed, healthy people who are self-assured and have enough self-love to know that another’s actions in not a reflection of oneself. So for these people, I think pain stems from the principle of betrayal itself rather than the connotations of infidelity.

The question of ‘action’ (the action of cheating) is not merely a question of love for our partner but a question of will. Is cheating a choice? The ‘moral blindness’ that Ruskin talks about is what erases this dilemma. We are unable to recognise the ethical or emotional consequences of our actions and as such we detach from the morally righteous to join the morally grey. Here, we are guided by intuition and what we feel is right for us rather than what is right for everyone involved. In many cases the cheater is sorry for hurting their partner but not for the affair itself. The transgression in the preparators eyes is the harm inflicted onto their partner rather than the act itself, this is the moral blindness. But this is voluntary, a detachment from reality to engage in the fantasy is a choice.

Infidelity is messy, its human and its paradoxical. It forces us to reconsider ourselves and our relationships, and I believe that it is in this state that both can truly flourish. A relationship will either sink or swim at this crossroad, and whatever is chosen is probably for the best. Until we stop reducing cheaters to villains and the betrayed partners to martyrs, we will continue to misunderstand each other. Cheating doesn’t just break a promise- it exposes the fragility of the promise itself, and the conditions under which it was made.